Guild Wars 2

A lot of good, but also a fair few worrying points.

The pulsing blind on GS and pulsing stab in RS is will do wonders in pvp (reliable stomps will be much more accessible).

It struck me as odd however, that while GS has chill on auto (to keep people in melee range), RS only has it on a long CD skill. They even went so far as to replace the chill on the 2n skill with poison.

If you would want chill on any skill surely it would be the movement skill?

Also reaper seems exceedingly vulnerable to ranged attacks. With our only mobility being RS 2 (600 range) and no way to block/reflect/absorb projectiles, trying to get into melee range with say, a SB ranger is going to be extremely painful.
Spec grasp is easily dodged, especially at range, RS 2 and GS 5 are both only 600 range, eh.

Also for all the stuff about having chill everywhere to stop people from escaping, literally all it takes is 1 shadowstep/blink/etc, which all ten to hae range of 900 or more, and a reaper can’t do squat.

Finally, they really took the whole ‘long cast time’ thing way to far. Longg cast times just makes it clunky to use and easy to avoid – why are they even shouts if they have a cast time? At the very least the stun break one should be instant cast.

Edit: Also with regards to the elite. Why would I use a 2m CD, 2s cast time skill that stuns and chills, when I could just use lich, and just kill everything for 20 seconds?

The damage on shouts is peanuts.
The cast time on shouts is not.

I don’t see why they have cast time at all, let along long ones.
The elite especially stands out.

You’ve got a 2s cast time where you shout at all your enemies, letting them know to CC you as soon as possible.

The only real benefit of having damage on the shouts at all, is to proc those on hit traits more, but if it comes at the cost of cast times? Nah.

The ideal would have been to have both.

Dark path stands out especially when you’re rooted or chilled. It also (based off 90% of current movement skills) has a better reach.

The new skill doesn’t rely on a projectile hitting, which makes it more reliable and can also be better used for escape. It is however vulnerable to mobility impairment (which is a pretty significant issue, for example, getting entangled).

It also sacrifices dark path’s great AOE chill for AOE poison. This is especially odd considering the elite spec seems to have a rather large focus on chill…

Why would you use nova unless you’re running minions?

The skill is only useful if you go into the DM line, and use your GM trait on on of the two minion traits there.

Unless the CD is very short, it otherwise doesn’t seem to be very good for non MM builds, which is like, 95% of necros.

That jagged horror shout is pretty awful.

The only real benefit is if you have the trait that lets them pull conditions off you, but even then it’s doubtful if you’ll be able to keep them alive for very long.

Chill is an important tool if we want to be melee “attrition” class, but it is still useless if we don’t have access to good movement skills, since chill doesn’t stop people from using a blink and disengaging with a single click.

Also if dark path is getting replaced by an actual movement skill, that actually hurts us, since dark path isn’t effected by mobility conditions since its a blink, but the movement skill will be.

We need MORE movement, now replacing what we have.

Also I don’t know what anet is thinking with giving us slow, terrible cast time.
This is objectively terrible, I don’t know what they’re thinking. We already suffer hard from getting CC’d all day because no stab, so this, plus the new slow condition? ahahha.

As always Anet managed to disappoint regardless of how low my expectations.

I don’t want slow, easy to avoid or CC junk.
That’s an issue we ALREADY have – a lot of our skills have pointlessly long cast times.

I don’t want more selfish skills, I want to, like every other class in the game to be able to provide some team support.

I don’t want more bloody minion skills Seriously, MM players are a tiny minority of necros for a reason – minion AI is awful, especially melee minions. What the hell do I want a few jagged horrors for?

Also chill on fear? How am I supposed to push someone off a point in sPvP if they’re bloody chilled.

Man oh man, overall giving us good access to chill is what we need to be a melee “attrition” class, but seriously, you have to be smart about it.

Yeah, as a resource it would actually be interesting.

Imagine for a moment, a channel skill that drains your LF as it runs, but the LF it drains translates directly to extra damage/conditions/whatever.

Basically if it could be used as a mana bar as well as 2nd health bar, it would be neat.

Other then the obvious "let us heal and use the rest of our skills in DS’,

A trait to give aegis on entering DS would be a very useful defensive tool, that actually requires well timed use – mindless using it won’t give much benefit, but timing it to block key skills like stuns, backstabs etc would increase our survivibility a lot.

Any other defensive buffs that scale (evades/invulns etc etc) instead of, or addition to the above would also be nice.

Reduce the clunkiness of life blast by reducing cast and after cast times. Reduce the damage to keep the dps more or less the same, but it’s currently really clumbersome to use.

Also fix how often skills like life blast and dark path miscast. I mean, Jesus Christ, the amount of time where I try to dark path someone in front of me, and it just instantly goes to 4s CD for no discernible reason is extremely frustrating considering it is DPS, chill and movement (and with a GM trait dedicated to this single skill, boon corrupt).

The guardian thing is actually really dumb, if the no ICD thing is true.

You’ll pop a block during a team fight and easily get 15+ stacks of might just from random AOEs. God help you if they block a channel like 100 blades/life siphon.

15s base duration is not insignificant either.

The ICD’s on the necro traits is really long, and kills what would otherwise be nice traits.

Edit: If the necro GS autochain is what we think it is, bitter chill will be kinda neat.

100 blades does awe inspiring cleave damage – if you manage to hit with the full channel.

The point is, regardless of if we have other skills that can transfer/convert conditions, you cannot say self applied conditions are useful when 90% of the time in pvp you wish you had more condi cleanse, not less.

If we were literally up to our ears in condi cleanse to the point where we just never had conditions, then sure, it could be useful.

well of power, deathly swarm and putrid mark are all limited in terms of how many conditions you transfer.

It is very likely that you’ll have more then 3 conditions on you during a fight, in which case, having the extra condition does not benefit in anyway, since you’re still tranferin the limit (or 1 per tick in the case of the well).

If you have less conditions on you then the limit, then it’s only useful if you planning on using it anyway.

Yes which relies upon using important, high CD skills.

All of which (other then consume conditions) have a limit on how many conditions they deal with.

So unless you have a perfectly timed situation where you use a corruption followed by a condition removal/transfer, then you are wasting potential.
Either using one of your few, or only condit removals on self applied gimps, or not wasting the CD, and having to live with a self applied kitten .

It is completely unreasonable to call it useful when it relies on wasting other skills.
If it was like revenant, where they get buffs for having conditions on them, then yes, it could be seen as a benefit.

But Necro is not Rev.

There is literally no reason for the self applied conditions to exist.

Seriously, it adds literally nothing to gameplay, and just makes the skill overall worse.

Corrupt boon got nerfed hard and fast. The reduction to only 5 boons and DOUBLING the cast time were seriously not needed either.

Also yeah, it’s pretty sad to see anet is essentially making rev the condi controller necro should have been.

I laughed pretty hard when I saw the downed state nerf in the notes.
I mean, really?

It would be better if you mainhand weapon effected your DS skills in the same vein as a thief’s offhand weapon alters their 3rd skill.

Also I haven’t used the trait for a while, but I always found piercing pretty clunky to use effectively.

If it was say, a (small) aoe on impact, it would be a lot more practical.

Along with the link above, and articles like this part 1 and part 2 ,just send anet other press articles you find that discuss the issues.

The fact that it’s presented to a wider audience (might) make them more inclined to actually listen.

Sagat.3285:

It cannot get worse so it’s all good.

I said the same thing before they announced the proposed trait changes – I was wrong.

flow.6043:

Darwec.3784:

manveruppd.7601:

Honestly, I also think that FitG is better than ever. Having a stunbreak on a 10" CD (!!) is incredible!

You can trait a necro for 3 seconds of stability every 7 seconds in PVP, which is why i doubt they would change it any further. Thats a crazy amount of stability uptime even if its only onestack.

7 or 10 seconds is only true if you don’t use Death Shroud at all, completely unrealistic especially in PvP.
Then again, this is how Anet came up with 2 sec of weakness for Weakening Shroud.

Tobias.8632:

Isn’t stomping generally considered to be a bad idea pretty much most of the time?

Safe stomps are one of the most valuable things you can bring to any team fight.
The only time you don’t want to stomp someone is if they are down off-point and there’s no chance for them to get rezzed or rallied.

And this is why I don’t like the new lingering curses – even if it’s a ‘powerful’ trait, it screws with the balance of the class, and will hurt anyone who doesn’t use it, because anet will take it into account when balancing any and all conditions.

Being able to insta finish someone off with a touch of death would be pretty neat.

Bhawb.7408:

Kilger.5490:

Nerf to FITG has hurt necros too much.

You mean the very significant buff to FitG? Because it is significantly better now than it ever has been since Shade was nerfed to create it.

It’s honestly not.

I’ve used the trait since the start on the game, and though I was initially pretty happy about the stun break, I still think it’s worse now then it was pre stability nerf.

It still works for shroud stomping 1v1, but outside of that the change hurt a fair bit.

My suggestion was just make that 1 stack of stability pulse every 3-5 seconds, which would make it much better in a sustained fight, while not being overbearing due to the nerf.

Softspoken.2410:

This definitely makes it easier to set up transfer spikes. I’m a little worried though: if things like burning and poison are now allowed to stack intensity, taking everyone’s conditions simultaneously becomes a lot more dangerous. Acceptable risk, or just a trap?

Guardians have save yourselves, which would be in the same boat – if Anet altered that skill then this signet would follow suit.

Also in PvP/party you can see what conditions people have anyway – you know what you’re getting into.

Parasitic contagion’s effectiveness directly scales with conditions applied/damage, so you can’t call it a trait for power builds anymore then terror ‘because power builds can still use fears’.

From the other thread, I suggested a change to make plague signet more playable and interesting.

Currently Plague Signet does this.
passive: Pull conditions from allies 1 at a time.
Active: Transfers all conditions from you to your target.

While the active can be useful, the passive is terrible since we don’t have the condi removal to deal with a trickle of random conditions – our removals work best against burst.

If however we changed it to the following…

Plague signet
Passive: Transfer one condition from self to enemy.
Active: Transfer All (or 5 each, whatever works) conditions from nearby allies to self.

The passive gives you some much needed ‘small’ condi removal, while putting more pressure on the enemy, punishing them with their own conditions (it also makes corruptions less bad).
The active gives you actually meaningful team support, and because you choose when you take the conditions, they are far easier to manage through consume conditions/deathly swarm etc.

Death shiver sets the precidence for pulsing effects in DS – I strongly approve of (most) DS entry traits be pulsing instead – this encourages and benefits actually staying in DS, instead of just pulsing it.

Foot in the Grave would actually be semi useful again, if it pulses – one stack of stability is a joke, but if it pulses every 3-5 seconds, suddenly it gives you a bit of staying power without making it too difficult to apply CC to.

Also while we’re still talking about conditions, can someone please justify why corruption skills still self inflict conditions, that isn’t simply ‘gw1 did it’?

Like really, only in the ideal world can you take advantage of the self applied conditions more then the odd chance.

So with that in mind, the self applied conditions are negative for the necro, therefore one would assume that the offensive part of the skill would have to be that much more powerful to compensate.

So I mean really, would anyone care (in the negative sense) if they just didn’t kitten yourself simply by activating?

Speaking of condition control, it occurs to me that if plague sig had it’s effects inverted (passive transfer 1 condition to enemy, active pull conditions from allies) it would actually have more utility.

Passive condi transfer to enemies is useful on it’s own, as both an offensive and defensive ability, and being able to control WHEN you pull conditions from allies (and a lot of them) makes it easier to take advantage of them with consume conditions/deathly swarm/putrid, as well as being a somewhat useful support tool.

Simplicity really.

Chance to corrupt boons and a damage buff for when they have none synergise with each other, and with our other boon removals (corruption CD trait being in the same line also helps).

This makes it straight forward and easy to understand in both use and purpose.

I meant how the current proposal has no useful GM traits for power – hence the suggestion.

Now that I think about it a bit more, it could be very useful for PvP, but not so much PvE. However I know some other skills/traits somewhere give a bonus to damage on targets without boons… Hm, that could be tacked on, making it useful regardless of gamemode.

Numbers pulled out of my kitten not withstanding, does the idea of some thing like this seem interesting?

Path of Corruption
25% chance on crit to corrupt a boon (ICD 5 seconds or whatever)
+10% damage on foes without boons

What if Path of Corruption, rather then only buffing dark path (which has it’s own CD, DS CD and life force gating it), it was just a straight up X chance on crit to corrupt a boon? (Or make it addition to it’s current effect, I unno)

Obviously this would be a GM tier trait, and the chance/ICD would need to be tweaked, but it would actually be useful to non condi builds, while still fitting with the crit/condition theme of the trait line.

Dark path was fantastic when it kept going as long as you were in range, since it made it actually powerful for chasing people down.

Now, if someone is disengaging it’s effective range is quite limited. It would be nice if the projectile was faster.

In PvP, that’s not so easy – and it sure as hell takes more then 1 trait.

I think linger curses is a bad trait in the sense that it’s way to strong in a very specific way.

I fear that it’s going to effect the balance of the class very heavily, because anet has to think for every single condition we can apply, how it will perform when you have double duration from a single trait.

That is not healthy for build diversity or class balance.

Honestly lingering curses is not healthy for the class.

How many times has anet balanced something based on the scenario of extreme min/maxing (max condi duration/boon duration etc)?

With an easily accessible trait like this that DOUBLES duration on every condition, every condition needs to be balanced with this trait in mind.

So even if this is a great trait or not, it will ruin diversity and hurt the class overall.

In regards to a non condition build specific GM trait, bringing back withering precision with a lower duration but no/low ICD would be great. I miss the days of stacking weakness with my power build.

In terms of skill changes, there have always been a few things that niggle me.

Dagger mainhand is undeniably a melee weapon, and while Dark Pact Synergises with the auto chain well, Life Siphon does not. Life Siphon benefits from kiting away from people (since you don’t need to face them to use it) and keeping out of melee range.

While I can see that this lets it be the ‘vampiric’ weapon, synergistically, it would make a lot more sense if this was something like a small (think heartseeker range) leap skill.

This would have the benefits of:
A: Being a finisher
B: Being a movement skill, something that necro’s (melee ones especially) badly need.

It’s actual effect could be something like X damage, Y life siphon, and maybe a little bit of cripple or chill in the mix.

Ghastly Claws and Unholy Feast should either (or both) be whirl and blast finishers respectively. I mean seriously, just look at them.

Reaper’s Touch should also be a projectile finisher, since it literally is a projectile.

Deathly Swarm should be one as well, for the same reason.

Spinal Shivers needs a shorter cast time – it’s ridiculously long.

It would be nice if Locust Swarm gave AOE swiftness. Seriously, not having team support sucks.

It would make more sense if Feast of Corruption, being on a condition weapon and with the name it has, corrupted one(or more) boons, rather than the useless extra damage part.

Putrid Mark needs it’s team support back – it was our only team support and it got nerfed hard and repeatedly.

And lastly, the golem’s charge gives it 15 second of stability for no real good reason. Firstly, using charge should be instant cast (for the necro, still have a cast for the golem). Secondly, it would be more useful if it grants both the golem and the necro a lesser amount of stability. I mean really, even 1 stack for 5 seconds would be more useful then what it is currently.

Death Magic
This line has the potential to be a good defensive line, but currently I think it’s rathe lacking.

• The minor traits are a bit plain – I’ve never been a fan of soul compression since it only works after people die. Beyond the veil would be nicer if it was just AOE protection, so it’s actual team support, instead of minion support – which you quite possibly don’t even have.

• Shrouded removal would be much more interesting if it was like Shadow’s Embrace, working every 3 seconds rather than just once off.

• Putrid defence is very plain – I only see it being useful if you’ve got death nova and lots of minions, but if I’m running minions I’d be using Flesh of the Master anyway.

• It’s pretty unfortunate to have to choose between Greater Marks and Reaper’s Protection, since both are rather useful in PvP.

• Deadly strength is pretty plain – what about a trait for the master major (or minor) slot, that grants aegis for 2s or something? That creates actual skilled play, in timing your DS specifically to block a big hit, something which the class badly lacks.

• Stacking two minion GM traits in this line doesn’t make a whole lot of sense – it would be more intuitive if there was one in the major line instead of 2 in GM.

• Unholy Sanctuary would be more interesting if it allowed you to benefit from heals, at the reduced rate. Then it would be a simple case of tweaking the % of the heal you get to balance it. Actually, it would be more interesting if all necros had this, but this trait improved that rate.

Blood Magic
This line has been a joke for a long time. You can sort of see what is intended with this line, but it has always failed horribly at it.

• Move ALL of the siphoning bonuses into the minor traits (keep Full of Life, that’s not bad), which then leaves the major traits free for actually impactful abilities, rather than loads of these passive things.

• Remove the ICD on Mark of Evasion – we have no vigor, and no other damge mitigation rather than our dodges, so why the ICD?

• Blood Thirst is real plain, but buffing it too much could make siphons OP. Simple solution is to remove it.

• I have literally no idea what they were thinking, when it came to Quickening Thirst. Dual daggers is niche as hell – remove that absurd hp threshold, it’s useless if it only works over 75%.

• If Transfusion actually worked on yourself, it would be genuinely useful, while not being OP because it’s got to be the single most CC’d skill in the game, I swear.

• I have no idea why Deathly invigoration is a GM trait when A: it’s effect is weak and B: it doesn’t even effect yourself. If this worked on exiting DS (or if it effected you, in DS) this would be ok as an adept trait.

These suggestions leave a few gaps in the major traits, which would take some time and careful thought to fill, but frankly this line is in such a bad state currently I think it’s justified.

Soul Reaping
By and large this line is still great – the new Spectral Mastery and Vital Persistence are great, although it’s a real shame you can’t get the CD reduction on spectrals and DS skills anymore, because I’ve always been of the opinion that we suffer from overall long CD’s across the board.

• The speed buff part of Speed of Shadows is pretty meh, but I’m not sure what would be useful there to replace it. Your suggestion regarding swiftness isn’t bad – although straight up cleansing (just) immob instead of the duration reduction of the three slows would be more useful – if possibly a little strong.

• CDR of vital persistence should be 20% like every other one in the game – especially since it’s a master trait now.

• People might disagree with me, but I think Master of Terror is really bad compared to spectral mastery and Vital persistence – which both have lots of utility value.

• With the new stability mechanics, and in line with death shiver (and my suggested aegis thing) I think it would be more interesting and useful if Foot in The Grave pulsed that single stability stack every 3 seconds (or more, if that is too strong) since it’s honestly not that great now, even with the stun break.

• Dhuumfire is kind of weak with the coming burn changes, but it’s good in this trait line. I would either buff the duration a little, or replace master of terror (debatable).

I’m usually reluctant to suggest lots of changes because Anet doesn’t listen terribly well. If you have their ear however, who knows.

Spite
The new minors are really nice, in large part because they synergise with each other, and make a nice theme to the line (which also means CtD and CoD fits very well with them).

• Bitter chill is kind of iffy, since we don’t have that many chills with which to take advantage of it. If it works in tandem with chilling darkness however, blinding plague/WoD would be pretty funny.

• Spiteful talisman’s damage boost is quite nice – more useful in PvE then PvP though.

• Death shiver works great with DS power builds – will it proc as soon as you enter DS or 3 seconds after? Currently it’s 3s after, which is a strong disadvantage, and is consistent with (for example) the thief’s cleanse in stealth trait.

• Axe training’s effects have all been gated, making the trait far, far worse. No one wants to run their auto attack to try get the benefits they already got by default.

• Close to Death is still by far the best GM trait for any build that relies on direct damage. Signets aren’t so strong currently that signet mastery could hope to overshadow CtD. Spiteful spirit has an awful ICD that makes it absolutely laughable compared to CtD.

Curses
I was genuinely shocked at how gummed up curses got, considering I came in with zero expectations for buffs.

• Barbed precision merging with hemo was a logical move, however the change to Target the Weak hurts power builds, while not really helping condi builds (which rarely are desperate for more crit chance). If it was possible to simply make it buff both direct and condi damage, that would be much better.

• Toxic landing is literally a liability with the self induced weakness. Name wise, it would make more sense to call it master of corruption, since that far more accurately encompasses what the trait actually does.

• Weakening shroud is bad with an ICD. This trait was a shining example of one of the few times devs and players communicated directly on the forums, and came up with a result everyone (by and large) agreed with. Why they would undo this I don’t know – ICD’s on ‘entering DS’ traits is awful.

• Chilling darkness has always been very niche, due to the fact we don’t have a huge amount of blinds to take advantage of it. If it was replaced by something else, I don’t think it would be terribly missed.

• Reaper’s precision has never been good – I’ve experimented with it WvW because I can get 100% crit chance outside of DS (with fury), and I didn’t like tiny 2s dose of weakness from WS. This is absolutely not a master trait – either rework it heavily, or just remove it.

• Path of Corruption is a fairly handy trait, but it only effects one skill, which is behind its own CD, your LF, and your DS CD. It’s also pretty much useless in PvE. It is however useful to both power and condi builds. Move this down to adept and bump off chilling darkness.

• I’m a bit divided on Lingering Curse – it’s powerful, but I think it might be unhealthy for the class in the long term. Too often Anet has balanced things on a ‘what if?’ basis (if necro has 100% boon/condi duration then X is overpowered) – this will certainly cause similar sorts of issues. I’d rather see it in the master slot (replace reaper’s), and make it buff scepter range to 1100 or something, plus the condi damage boost/CD reduction or something. 100% duration bonus effects balance too much I think.

• Parasitic contagion I feel is more of a death or blood magic trait then curses, but the fact you can’t use it + terror is probably a good thing.

• There needs to be a GM trait that benefits non condi builds. Re-adding Withering precision would be nice, without the ICD but a shorter duration, or with ICD’s per target.

Spite got buffs in terms of it’s minor traits. Other then that it didn’t change much – people are still going to ctd.

Curses it basically the same for condi builds – they’re going to use the exact same three traits. Non condi builds got shafted pretty hard though in this line.

Death magic got buffed for minion builds, but is pretty terrible otherwise.

Blood magic was terrible, and still is.

Soul reaping was marginally buffed for both condi and power builds, but it’s always been good.

I came into this with zero expectation, and somehow Anet still managed to disappoint me.

The meta power build is completely unchanged in terms of what they pick, although enjoying a few real nice buffs.

The curse line is pretty hilarious now.
Currently I use it for a power build, using reaper’s precision, banshee’s wail and path of corruption. Imagine my suprise when ALL THREE become master traits. The line literally can’t be used for non condi builds anymore, and for condi builds it’s exactly the same as before.

Anet needs to knock it off with the minions – they’re unpopular for a reason. And even if they were good, builds that revolve around lots of dumb npc’s is bad design anyway.

I find it genuinely amusing how bad death and blood magic lines are, while soul reaping and spite get great buffs.

Why did they switch path of corruption and terror?
Now that you can’t use lower traits in higher slots, the trait line is pretty awful for power, yet unchanged for condi builds – no one uses lingering or parasitic because they’re objectively bad choices.

Edit: Oh lawd, I can’t stop laughing at how awful this is. The meta builds got buffed, and everything else got messed up. The three traits I used in the curse line are now ALL master traits!

A faster channel time for dagger 2 would have been more useful, but a buff is a buff.

if they channel time got the rapid fire treatment, it would be overall a lot better.

I used to use teleporter gun + spec walk to jaunt around neat places in PvE.
Because the teleporter gun/spec walk had no limits, I could get to some neat out of map location (like the top of the mountain at the priory), activate spec walk, waypoint someone where, activate tele gun, spec recall and bam, people could teleport from the way point to my spot.

I used to do this in wvw early on to sneak zergs into enemy keeps, but that’s a different story…

Edit: Pic related was a hilarious two hour journey that took us outside and around half the map. This sort of thing is where necro is objectively best class. Shame they nerfed spectral waypointing though.

Withering precision is laughably awful, after the weakness buff/trait nerf. I would literally prefer arcane precision tier weakness application to withering precision – 20s ICD is kittenous. I don’t really like the idea of making it lie dumbfire either, simply because I don’t like traits that are essentially wasted when you’re not in DS.

Also our class already has a huge amount of AA spam. I’d prefer how the trait used to be (it was like 3s weakness, 25% chance on crit, no ICD). Basically being able to apply a condition like this more often, is far more useful then being able to apply it reliably, with long duration, but very infrequently. It’s all about the pressure.

Also I still think death magic adept minor or major should be 2s (hell, even 1s) aegis. Gives us a block that needs to be used intelligently… almost as if, encouraging skilled play?

Edit: Oh lawd, I didn’t realise Anet censored a type of illness, how truly awful, I guess anet would rather we not mention the existence of kitten sufferers.

Jump off a cliff that should kill you and see what happens.

Yeah, strength runes sadly are the way to go for power. I can get 10 stacks of might no worries with dagger, just from sigils of might, because of them. RIP my old divinity runes though.

This trait was only good, back when all hp level proc’d abilities, activated on hit at ANY health, while in DS.

Neat. Have you tried using perplexity runes? I have been inactive since before the crit damage nerf (RIP my divinity runes), but they should be fairly hilarious, even with the CD’s, now that fear properly interrupts.

Healing in DS should happen, but it would be unwise to not alter HOW those heals effect them in DS, because I do agree, that it would be a tad OP. For example, multiple necro’s with transfusion, would have a hilarious circlejerk of group healing.

So some abilities might need to be nerfed somewhat/have necro’s only recieve some set fraction/scaling amount of heal from different sources etc to make it balanced.

But no one can honestly say that literally having all these healing effects, including your own abilities and traits, as well as a large part of team support simply not work because of our own class mechanic is good gameplay.

Are you joking? Shorter CD’s are vastly more useful then longer duration, especially when you’re in a longer fight.

Longer duration makes the skills more powerful. Shorter CD’s gives you more flexibility, which is invaluable in a no so flexible class.

Also I wouldn’t be so quick so assume ‘essential’ traits. While I would take 6 in soul reaping, simply because it has some very good traits, the others are far from essential.

Also sadly spec walk is looking worse and worse, although it will (hopefully) always be useful for hilarious escapes, it became ‘meh’ for LF generation when they put in the ICD and reduced the amount gained, and with the upcoming change to locust swarm, it’s not needed for perma swiftness. To top that off, spec armor is getting the CD reduced, so I don’t see much use for spec walk anymore, there are more useful things to slot there.

It having low dps is less then ideal, but even if it was great damage, the synergy still isn’t there, simply because the dagger is fundamentally a melee weapon. Dagger 3 is fantastic for helping you get into, and remain in melee range, the warhorn (based buff to locust swarm)and even the focus also work well with this in mind (dagger off hand eh, not so much). It’s all about getting into melee, staying there, and stabbing things.

But then you see dagger 2, a ranged, slow channel, that contributes in zero way to melee combat, and is best used OUTSIDE of melee range, to minimize damage. But then the channel is over, and suddenly you need to be in melee range again. Everyone other melee weapon except I think guardian GS and warrior axe(which are both pAOEs and therefore maximise their potential at melee range) have melee skills as their 2. Hell, basically all skills on all melee weapons either are melee attacks or benefit from, or help to stay in, melee range.

If our 2 was a movement skill (even just heart seeker tier range), caused some level of cripple chill or was just you know, a melee skill, then yes, it would have synergy. Sadly, it does not.

Edit: So yes, they could buff it to the point where I would actively WANT to use it, but I still wouldn’t like it, because it’s poorly thought out, and exists there pretty much because ‘dagger is in the bloodmagic line’.